First
by OwlinAMinor
Summary: Ever wonder how Doc and Sharon got together? This is my version. One-shot. Doc POV.


**First**

**So, I wanted to enter the contest The Smoochies on http:/thehostfan(DOT)com/fanfic but I wanted to use an original pairing. WandaxIan, MelaniexJared, and JamiexOC are all kind-of overused, which is why I'm writing about DocxSharon! This is how they got together, at least originally (it **_**is**_** a oneshot, you know). Doc POV!**

**Ian: Aren't you forgetting something?**

**Me: . No … I don't think so …**

**Ian: Disclaimer?**

**Me: But I own ****The Host****! Why should I write a disclaimer?**

**Ian: No you don't.**

**Me: Yes I do.**

**Ian: No you don't.**

**Me: Yes I do.**

**Ian: no**

**Me: yes**

**Ian: no**

**Me: yes**

**My fellow Host-obsessed friend Beth: *randomly pops up out of nowhere* EGO WAR!**

**Me: Fine, I don't own ****The Host**** (aka the book of ultimate awesomeness) or any of its characters, Stephenie Meyer does. Happy now?**

**Ian: Maybe … But on with the story!**

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"Doc! We've got four new guests! And one of 'em is hurt!"

Ian's shout, wafting through the damp air from the mouth of my cave, awoke me from my drowsy daydreaming. Honestly, could nobody get a wink of sleep in this place? Ever since I found my way to the caves nine months ago, it had been nothing but Doc do this and Doc do that. Especially since I was the only person there with a medical degree . . . but then again, at least I was alive. Not so much for all the other poor souls (oops, wrong word choice there . . . poor . . . people?) whose minds had been so carelessly erased.

"DOC! ARE YOU ALIVE IN THERE?"

Ian was yelling again, more loudly this time. That guy's lungs could break down the roof if he wanted them to. Not that he wanted them to. His brother Kyle . . . now that was another story.

Anyway, I banged my head on the edge of my flimsy, dirty, used-to-be-white hospital cot to wake myself up, then beckoned to Ian that he could come in.

In they tramped. Ian looked about the same as he usually did; dirty jeans and ancient, ratty t-shirt, sunburned skin, messy ebony hair, piercing eyes the color of a tropical ocean, wide grin at the prospect of new additions to the family that was cave life. With him were two women. One was hunchbacked, still a little plump, with hard, cruel face and blazing red hair shot through with streaks of blood and sand. The other . . . was an angel.

And not just any angel.

She was my angel.

My angel looked like a younger, infinitely more beautiful version of the other newcomer, who I assumed to be her mother. Rough sand disfigured her face, but I knew it was her . . .

Sharon Stryder.

The girl I had loved since grade four.

The girl I had never given up on.

The reason I had become a doctor.

The reason I was alive.

She was here.

I could have jumped ten feet, flew to the moon and back, or whooped like a three-year-old . . . but I did none of those things. I simply stood . . . and stared . . . and let my jaw fall to the rough, hard cave ground . . .

Her eyes widened. _She recognized me! _half of me screeched in amazement. _Yeah, but just because she remembers you doesn't mean you have any more chance of winning her than you did years ago, _the other, more logical half reminded me.

"Eustace?" she whispered, in a scratched voice that nonetheless was music to my ears.

"You know each other?" Ian queried, looking from me to Sharon and back again until I thought I would grow dizzy just by watching him.

"We . . . we . . . went to school together . . ." Sharon explained.

"Small world," Sharon's mother (I thought her name was Maggie) remarked. We both nodded, and that was when I noticed _why_ the most beautiful girl on the planet was blessing me with a visit to my humble abode (no, really, it was pretty humble; my doctor's cave was strewn with old rags, chemical smells, and blood stains . . . not exactly well-kept, I assure you.)

Her ankle was dangling from its socket, her arms were draped over Ian's and Maggie's backs.

I tried to find my voice . . . and finally, I shook it from its hidey-hole in the depths of my voice box.

"So . . . I should probably treat that ankle . . ."

_Bad Eustace! BADBADBAD Eustace! _I reprieved myself. _The first thing you say to her is about her broken ANKLE? Not even a greeting, a how-were-you-during-the-invasion-of-our-fair-planet? Brilliant. Just brilliant._

Luckily for me, my angel had similar ideas.

"Probably should. We might as well get on with it, I don't have all day." Sharon plopped down on the cot I had been resting in minutes before with a _BOING!_ (I really need to get those springs fixed . . .)

"Honey? Do you want me here with you?" Maggie asked.

"No, Mom, I'm fine. I think having a broken ankle treated is a hell of a lot easier than living in a city of parasites for almost a year." I shuddered as she spoke . . . living with parasites for almost a year? My poor, poor angel . . .

Ian cracked a smile. He had more smiles than the ocean has waves, honestly he did. I had nearly forgotten he was there in my reverie about Sharon.

"So, Doc, I'll show Maggie back to the main room so Jeb can give her the tour. Oh, and if you were curious, the other new arrivals are Jamie Stryder (Sharon's cousin) and Jared Howe (Jamie's late older sister's boyfriend)."

"Works for me," Sharon and I said in unison. I repressed a childlike urge to shout "JINX!" as I mentally pumped a fist – Sharon and I must have an inner connection to do that!

With a "See you" from Maggie, Maggie and her guide departed the room, leaving me alone with the girl of my dreams. Oh, God, now I was hyperventilating . . .

"Wait, hold up here!" you're probably thinking. "Why are you in love with this girl? How do you know her? What did you mean about her being the reason you became a doctor and the reason you're still alive?"

Picky, picky. Here you are:

_***flashback***_

_In fourth grade, I was the new kid. And not just any new kid, but the geeky, glasses-wearing, library-hanging-out-in science-freak type of new kid who always gets picked on. Sharon Stryder was the popular girl, the beautiful girl, the smart girl, the girl every boy in the grade had sworn he would marry someday. I, of course, was not excluded from the other boys . . . but I loved her for a reason that was mostly overlooked:_

_Sharon was also a kind girl._

_My first day, she was the first to smile at me from her seat two rows away in Mrs. Angelo's cozy classroom. Her smile was beautiful, dazzling, and sparkling . . . she offered to be my partner for our social studies project on China – which earned me more than a few jealous stares – and sat with me at lunch._

_But not all dreams last forever._

_After two weeks, after our project was done and most kids knew my name, she went back to her other popular, beautiful, smart friends, and ignored me._

_I watched her._

_I hadn't forgotten her kindness._

_I suppose I could have been called a stalker, but at the time I preferred the term casual information gatherer. I learned her likes and dislikes, her friends, her crushes, her family, her entire life in the hopes that someday I could use it to win her heart._

_One piece of information that I discovered was about her crazy uncle, Jeb; he had been building a house in the desert (really, it was remodeling, but I didn't find that out until much later)._

_This was the knowledge I later used to find Jeb and his caves, and save my life from the life-sucking monsters called the Souls._

_Sharon was also the reason I became a doctor._

_When we were both in seventh grade, her father died in a tragic car crash._

_I wasn't invited to the funeral, but I came anyway. I watched her cry her heart out in the freezing November rain, shivering on her father's gravestone._

If I was a doctor, _I thought. _I could have saved her father, and she would be in debt to me for life, and she would love me.

_When I fled to the caves after the Souls arrived on Earth, it was not before searching for my beloved Sharon . . . but she had disappeared, like snow on the first day of spring._

_Yet here she was, before my weary eyes, perhaps thinner and covered in grime, but beautiful as ever._

_My Sharon._

_My angel._

_***flashback end***_

"S-s-so . . . how have you been?" I interrogated.

"As good as someone can be, what with those evil aliens taking over the world. You?"

"Pretty much the same. Your ankle . . . how did it happen?"

"We were walking through the desert, and I tripped over a rock . . . it was a stupid miss."

"You're lucky it didn't hit higher up." I examined the shelves carved into the rock, searching for some bandages. _You're giving her an excellent opportunity to check out your butt, _a voice in the back of my head remarked. _Shut up! _I told it.

Wishing I had worn something better than my usual filthy-white-robe-scuffed-sneakers garb so that I could be more impressive to her, I rolled an ancient, practically moth-eaten ivory cottony bandage around Sharon's bloody ankle. _She deserves better._

"Thanks."

I looked up after cutting the bandage with a rusty pocketknife I always carried in the pocket of my jacket. Was Sharon . . . blushing?

_If by blushing you mean her cheeks are becoming a beautiful shade of crimson, then yes, she is,_ came the voice.

_SHUT. UP. _What is wrong with me? Arguing with myself? Then again, as a wise man once said . . . "It's normal to argue with yourself. It's only when you lose the argument that it becomes strange." So I was fine . . . for the moment, at least.

Sharon's long, lanky, tan legs dangled off the side of the flimsy cot. Her face was an incredible shade of rosy red, her eyes were emerald, her mouth puckered in such a cute way . . . I was alone . . . with the girl I loved . . . I had never taken any risks in my life . . . why not start now?

I leaned over, took her soft, warm face in my hands, and pressed my lips against hers.

Thought number one: _CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP . . ._

Thought number two: _I can't believe I actually did it . . ._

Thought number three: _Woah . . ._

Thought number four: _Sharon is sexy . . ._

Thought number five: _If I die in five minutes, I'll die a happy man._

Her lips were frozen solid with shock at first, but slowly, ever so slowly, they began to move against my own. I tasted orange, and peppermint, and something tropical I couldn't quite identify . . . mango, perhaps. Kissing was better than the first glint of the sun's rays on a cold, dreary day, better than a chocolate cake for a man who hasn't eaten for a week, better than a family for an orphan who has known none, better than a hundred percent on a test for a boy whose best grade previous to that is eighty percent . . .

I could make a thousand similes and still not come close to the wonder of kissing Sharon.

Kissing . . . Sharon . . .

My dreams were traveling, slowly, but enough for me, into the horizon of my life.

My hands cradled the face I had memorized so well, her arms hung limp at her sides, caught in my embrace.

Everything good has to end sooner or later.

I prefer sooner – less pain, less heartache.

I was the one to pull away.

When I did, after the longest, most jubilant moment of my life, all I could see was the shock and fear in Sharon's eyes.

I stood up, as did she. In her eyes, there was a transformation; from shock and fear to determination and confidence.

Then, she spoke. Her voice was pleasant, as if we had shared a few minutes of small talk, instead of the wondrous kiss that we had in fact took part in.

"Have you ever done that before, Eustace?"

My turn to be shocked. Out of all the things I would have expected her to ask me . . . certainly not that. The answer to her inquiry was embarrassing . . . but I couldn't keep secrets from my one true love.

"No. Never. Why?" I replied with a question of my own.

A smile played around the corners of her mouth, peaking through the curtains of her lips, but not drawing fully back.

"'Cause for someone who's never done that before, you're a mighty fine kisser."

And with that, she swept around, with no regards to the ankle I knew must be hurting her, kicking up dust from the cave floor as she sauntered back into the hallway, leaving me to simply gawk in her wake.

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**Ian: 0_o Who knew Doc had emotions?**

**Me: *slaps Ian* Be nice! Anyway . . . reviews are always welcome, no matter if you loved or hated it!**

**Ian: Unless you want to be scarred for life by the appearance of the ghost of the Cookie Monster.**


End file.
